Nurses' Caring Behavior and Patients' Satisfaction in a Tertiary Hospital in the Kingdom Saudi Arabia

Caring has always been associated with nursing as its essence, core, and foundation in the nursing practice. Identifying the caring behaviors of nurses would give additional determinants to effective and excellent quality nursing care, patient safety, and patient satisfaction. The research design utilized is the descriptive-correlational quantitative method. The participants were assessed with the Caring Nurse Patient Interaction Scale (CNPI) and the Patient Satisfaction Instrument (PSI). The study was completed through the purposive sampling of 162 patients of the inpatient wards in a selected tertiary hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The results showed that nurses' caring behavior as perceived by the patients had a mean score of 4.39 (SD=0.68) and patient satisfaction had a mean score of 3.97 (SD=0.50). There is a moderately high positive correlation (Pearson R=0.527;p=0.000) noted between the nurses' caring behavior as perceived by the patient and patient satisfaction. It could be concluded that patients were satisfied in the level of care received from the nurses in the hospital. They are more satisfied with how nurses value them and show their worth. However, they are not well satisfied with how nurses give respect to the perception of their health. Moreover, nurses must recognize the value of caring in relation to patients' satisfaction. They must give more emphasis on how to establish more rapport to build a stronger nurse-patient relationship.